Gaming News

As a present to KEY fans worldwide, the company has released its first batch of sample preview CGs for the upcoming Angel Beats! visual novel release on the game's official website. As a spin-off from the 2010 hit anime series, the visual novel itself will be told across nineteen different characters in six volumes. The first part will feature Yui, Iwasawa and Matsushita. And although their story may hve already been told, I for one am looking forward to learning more about the members of the Afterlife Battlefront and exploring their intricate backgrounds and characters in detail.

NIS America has released the first English trailer for their upcoming PlayStation Vita adventure title, Danganronpa™: Trigger Happy Havoc! The game will be released in North America on February 11, 2014 and Europe on February 14, 2014 in both digital and retail formats.

After years of fans clamoring for the original Japanese voices to be included in their games, Square-Enix announces Lighting Returns will offer it as a DLC. The DLC will be made available for free during the first 2 weeks of the game release starting on February 22. No word on a pricing point afterwards.

The Final Fantasy XIII franchise features an all star casts of Japanese voice actors with Lightning herself voiced by veteran Maaya Sakamoto. Previously, fans who wanted to play Final Fantasy XIII or XIII-2 undubbed with subtitles and menus in English would need to purchase the Chinese edition of the game.

Tomokazu Sugita and Hajike Odate wrote the story for this game. This game will include KenjiIto's beautiful composition, Kohaku Sumeragi, Yomi Sarachi, and Ryou Kanai's captivating illustrations and character designs, and Akito Kumagawa, Kazuya Negishi, and Kikakuya's [企画屋] (a game scenario group) dramatic scenario.

Although several of the promotional videos and articles often advertise Tomokazu Sugita and Arc System Works working on the project, Getsuei Academy -kou- does not rest with these two. They have utilized their energy (and budget) to bring the player the best cast and staff to this project.

Dengeki Bunko (the publisher of several well-known light novels such as ToraDora!, Sword Art Online, and Toaru series) and Sega announced their new crossover game, Dengeki Bunko Fighting Climax, during the Tokyo Game Show 2013.

Several screenshots have, showed Shana from Shakugan no Shana and Asuna from Sword Art Online crossing swords in 2D style fighting game. We can also see two more characters from Dengeki franchise: Leafa (Sword Art Online) and Wilhelmina (Shakugan no Shana).

More information will be announced on October 6 during the Dengeki Bunko Fall Festival in Akihabara.

Some people expected a late December launch. To those, including myself, we were wrong - that is, wrong in the right way. Mark your calendar, folks, because Sony's next gaming console, the PlayStation 4, has a release date.

Street Fighter IV has come a long way since being released back in 2009. The continuous support from Capcom has enabled the game to evolve, having gone through three major updates (i.e. Super Street Fighter IV, Super Street Fighter IV: AE, and Super Street Fighter IV: AE 2012). To maintain the momentum, Capcom, at this year's EVO (the biggest fighting game tournament in the world), revealed its next installment for the Street Fighter IV series. Known as Ultra Street Fighter IV, the game will have new contents that should appease fans of old and new.

Last week, I wrote a report on the development of an independent Western-developed JRPG title called Soul Saga that was looking to reach a lofty goal of $60,000.00 via kickstarter. After one week, I'm happy to report that not only has the title reached the initial goal Mike Gale set, but it's well on its way to reaching numerous stretch goals including voice acting, console appearances and expansion of the game's fascinating universe.

It's been an interesting week on Kickstarter, as tons of artists and designers have found the inspiration to shoot for their lofty ambitions with a bit of crowdsourcing. Although I just heard about this Megatokyo visual novel project on NeoGAF earlier today, the project has already managed to reach several of creator Fred Gallagher's lofty stretch goals for Megatokyo the Visual Novel within three days of its original announcement.

If the brief time that I had reading through the short demo of Pulltop's If My Heart Had Wings is any indicator of the type of quality that players can expect, then fans of visual novels and bishoujo games can be rest assured that MoeNovel's debut into localizing visual novels will be something memorable.

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I'll admit it, usually I'm wary of participating in any sort of crowdsourcing project on kickstater despite the fact that I spent some time after graduating college doing some indie game development myself. Will the project ever get completed? What kind of guarantee will I have that even if the goals are met that the project won't fall flat on its face? Those are the types of questions that have made me very wary about backing any type of project. However, when I saw that there was someone out there who had the same amount of ambition that I had fresh out of college before I entered the professional workplace, I just knew that I had to support his project- in this case Mike Gale's kickstarter JRPG project Soul Saga.

Originally released back in 2011, Isuna Hasekura's (Spice and Wolf) visual novel World End Economica (WEE) tells the tale of a boy named Haru who was raised on the Moon and dreams of accumulating a great amount of wealth by playing the stock market.

Plenty was revealed at Sony's press conference at E3. But without a doubt the most anticipated news revolved around the company's next generation console - the PlayStation 4 (PS4). Promised to be shown for the first time, how would the aesthetic design of the external hardware fair? How about the price of the system? Would it be competitive with Microsoft's Xbox One and be reasonable for consumers? As I awaited the start of the conference, eying a laptop screen from my living quarters, my adrenaline was already running high to say the least. And as things unraveled throughout the evening, my state of enthusiasm from the get-go had complimentary reasons to be so. Read more.

If NIS America's recent release of Black Rock Shooter: the Game wasn't enough to satisfy the legion of Hatsune Miku video game fans, SEGA has announced that they will be bringing the PlayStation 3 exclusive Hatsune Miku: Project Diva F to North America and Europe this August.